Corrected entry: When describing the temperature of Earth's crust around the world, it is said to be "increasing at a high velocity." Velocity is a vector quantity and implies a speed and spatial direction, which a rate of temperature increase/decrease simply would not have as a scalar quantity.
Corrected entry: The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is shown falling over on its side on top of a tidal wave headed for Washington D.C. Aircraft are slipping off of the deck into the ocean. The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy has been decommissioned and is no longer in service.
Correction: As of November 2009 the ship was available for donation as a museum and memorial to a qualified organization. Like the Intrepid or any number of other aircraft carriers that have been turned into museums, the USS John F. Kennedy may become a floating musuem by 2012, complete with aircraft displayed on deck.
Corrected entry: There's a newscast about the cancellation of the 2012 Summer Olympic games. The events of the film take place in December: the games would have concluded 4 months ago. Olympic games in 2012 are from July 27-August 12.
Correction: There was only talk about December, but then there was talk about the timeline moving up, things happening faster, that's why the ships were not ready, so the events of the film clearly take place during the Olympics.
Corrected entry: When Jacskon brings his children home early from their camping trip at the request of his ex-wife, she invites him in for pancakes - a request he declines because he is "late for work" even though he is returning from his trip "early."
Correction: He is driving a limo, and as seen in the movie, has his uniform with him in the car. He could simply have called the limo agency on the way back and told them he was available for work that day and asked if they had anything for him, as he is obviously prepared to step in at short notice.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the big cruise ship is capsizing, you see everything in the kitchen slide to one side. When a table slides by there are several see trough cans with fluid that are completely level and not tilted as the rest of everything in the shot.
Correction: If you take a glass half-filled with water, then slightly tilt the glass, the water will stay level, relative to the horizon line. If you are trying to say that the water tilted WITH the cans, then it's a mistake. Otherwise, the water acted the way it should have in such a situation.
Corrected entry: During the LA escape sequence, the limo avoids the giant donut from Randy's Donut. After the limo passes the donut rolls through the pedestrian crossing and goes behind a stop sign facing the wrong way. Inside joke?
Corrected entry: When describing the LA quake, the seismologists indicate that it is a 10.2, which is impossible on the logarithmic Richter scale.
Correction: A 10.2 earthquake is not possible on earth because a large enough fault slip is required to generate such energy. The fault line would have to be bigger then the earth it self.
Correction: This is false. A logarithmic scale is simply an exponential scale with no limit.
Corrected entry: When Krakatoa blew in 1883, it ejected some 5 cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere, dropping the average global temperature by as much as 1.2 degrees Celcius for the next year. It has been postulated that should the Yellowstone supervolcano erupt, it would exceed the last eruption, which ejected 240 cubic miles into the atmosphere. In the 28 days that pass before the denizens of the arks are permitted to go outside, the ash and debris from not only Yellowstone, but the scores of volcanoes that erupted almost simultaneously would have blocked the skies world wide. Not only would the citizens have been forbidden to emerge from their cocoons, but satellite views of Africa would have been impossible, and whatever crops survived the earthquakes and lava would have already started to perish.
Correction: True, if you only take the volcanic activity into consideration. But this is multiple volcano eruptions (one even turning Hawaii into a field of flowing magma) coupled with tsunamis that cover the land masses immediately afterward. The tsunamis would severely supress the effects of the volcanos (they won't do as much damage when submerged) and all the precipitation caused by the interraction between the magma and seawater would help clear the atmosphere of ash and debris.
Corrected entry: As the big Russian jet falls over the cliff, Sasha makes the Catholic Sign of the Cross, not the Orthodox Sign of the Cross. In the next scene, Yuri does the same.
Correction: This has already been corrected once. Who's to say the two are not actually Catholics? They have been living in the US for some time, and has had ample opportunity to convert to Catholicism.
Corrected entry: Tsunami waves in the deep ocean have an amplitude of only about 1 metre (3.3 ft) and a wavelength of about 200 kilometres (120 mi), so they can be hardly noticed or detected on ships. Therefore, building expensive arks is essentially pointless and many more people could be saved using already existing ships. Building the arks in mountains makes even less sense.
Correction: This film is fiction, not a documentary. The cataclysm that occurs is fictional and much stronger than anything that could occur in reality. In the film the waves and water are strong and high enough to make the arks necessary. As we see, they work exactly as expected.
Corrected entry: When the plane takes off from Yellowstone after refueling, it begins its takeoff roll on runway 15. This means the heading is 150 degrees (South southeast). As it lifts off and clears the other end of the runway, we see it is runway 32 (320 degrees). The opposing ends of runways are 180 degrees apart. So the opposite end of runway 15 (150 degrees) should be 33 (330 degrees), not 32.
Correction: Runways names are rounded to the nearest 10, so if the runway headings were 147 and 323, it would round to 150 and 320, explaining the unusual markings.
The correction is incorrect; assuming one end is marked as Runway 15, its reciprocal would be Runway 33.
Corrected entry: The Ark where the main characters are aboard is going to hit the face of Mount Everest. The wave that puts them there is 1500 meters high as it is traversing across India, but the base of Mt. Everest (according to Wikipedia) ranges from 4,200 m (13,800 ft) on the south side to 5,200 m (17,100 ft) on the Tibetan Plateau. Therefore the water could not have reached this height of land.
Correction: A wave's reach onto land is determined by the amount of water following it and pushing it onwards, not by the height of the wave. In this case, a lot of water is obviously pushing the front of the wave high up into the mountains.
Corrected entry: All throughout the movie the 1 phone you see most of the government officials using was in fact the iPhone 4! Now if you do the research you will find out that the iPhone 4 wasn't even released to the public yet. Also Apple denied even the phones existence.
Correction: So, we have a film set in 2012 where you can see government officials using a model of phone that was released in 2010. Hardly seems like a mistake to me. More importantly, given how tightly Apple locks down its releases, and that the movie would have been filmed before the iphone 3GS was even released, most likely they're just using a phone which happens to resemble the iphone 4.
Possibly a Sony phone (because Sony made 2012, and they usually add all their products into their movies).
Corrected entry: Jackson should not have been able to access the Internet from the middle of Yellowstone National Park, with no internet signal. (00:30:15)
Correction: It's the near future. It's not inconceivable that in that time wireless internet would become available in remote, but touristy areas.
Corrected entry: In the movie, the large transport plane is marked as an Antonov AN-500. The plane seen is in fact an Antonov AN-225. It is in no way as manoeuvrable as depicted in the escape sequence from Las Vegas, especially that shortly after take-off. Nor would it be able to take off from such a short runway, even if it wasn't loaded at all.
Correction: The movie is 2 years in the future. The second An-225 may have been altered and renumbered to an AN-500. This would include making all the necessary changes for its performance in the film (stronger engines, shorter take-off distance etc).
Corrected entry: In order to successfully seal off a hallway would you not need to seal off the ceiling too? If this is the case why build the sealed passageway under the animal enclosure that has a grated roof - as seen in the scene when the Russian girl drowns. With the rising water and the grated ceiling why did this water not spill over in to the adjoining sections. and furthermore, why was it only the middle compartment that had water that continued to rise?
Correction: The grated "ceiling" is there for the animal feces to drop through. They're not walking through a hallway, they're walking through a trough that holds the animal waste. In case of a hull breach the entire animal pen, living area and waste receptacle included, would be sealed off together as a unit.
Corrected entry: Young Lily's bed wetting problem is obviously quite chronic. She brings two packs of the Goodnites diapers with her on her trip to Yellowstone and we see her mother putting several packs of them into a shopping cart at a grocery store. When they are on the run (and obviously did not have any time to take any with them), we see her sleeping several times - however, she never has any accidents.
Correction: I'm not to sure we get to check too closely! In any case, at the end of the movie she tells Curtis that she's over the "problem".
Corrected entry: Just after the 5 people take off from Yellowstone Park, the earth beneath them caves in. A huge mass like that falling down would create an enormous downdraught and suck the rather small plane with it.
Correction: True, but remember the premise of the movie. The continents are breaking apart because the earth's mantle is heating up. The huge land mass falls into the heated mantle; the heated gasses would rise rapidly, counteracting the effects of the downdraught. Indeed, the plane does lose some altitude immediately after the collapse, then is able to climb again shortly after.
Corrected entry: How come nobody is sucking oxygen if the ark is at the same heigh as Everest? Oxygen is cut in half at 20,000 feet. At 29,035 feet, summit/top floor, oxygen is reduced to 1/3.
Correction: Since the sea level was pushed up to a level just below Everest's summit, it should mean that that the oxygen at sea level goes with it too.
Corrected entry: Earth does have enough water to cover the entire surface, but not have enough water to almost cover Mt. Everest at 8,848m.
Correction: True, but keep in mind that the entire African continent rose while the rest of the world was flooded. This would naturally have displaced a LOT of water, and allowing the sea level to rise even higher elsewhere on the globe.
Correction: They could be talking about the increasing/spreading of affected areas. Just like in a wild fire, it would be interesting to know how fast it spreads or grows.
gblontok